Tootsie Roll Industries CEO, Who Lived in Boston, Dies

By Lorraine Swanson (Patch Staff)

Caption: Melvin Gordon, CEO and chair of Tootsie Roll Industries, from a 1980s interview, with a few of his iconic brands.

He was the country’s oldest chief executive officer. He kept his storied candy company on Chicago’s Southwest Side and employed thousands of Chicagoans while other confectioners bolted for Mexico or China.

Melvin Gordon, the enigmatic chairman of the board and CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries, died in Boston on Jan. 20 after a short illness. He was 95.

Gordon led the company for more than five decades, overseeing the making of 64 million Tootsie Rolls a day, as well as Tootsie Pops, Junior Mints and Dots from his factory at 7401 S. Cicero Ave.

Gordon kept up a full schedule until an illness sidelined him last month, the company said.

His wife, Ellen R. Gordon, who worked side by side with her husband as the company’s president and chief operating officer, said her husband embodied the highest values in business, wisdom, generosity and integrity.

“Tootsie Roll has seen great growth and success during his time as chairman,” Ellen R. Gordon said in a written statement. “Melvin’s dedication to Tootsie Roll for over fifty years as board chair, his creativity and determination were an inspiration to us all.”

The chewy chocolate candy was invented by Austrian immigrant Leo Hirschfield in 1896, who named the oblong roll after his 5-year-old daughter. The Tootsie Roll was hand rolled and sold for a penny, the company’s website said.

Throughout the years, the candy became a household brand name, included in soldiers’ rations in World War I and World War II, and introducing new candies, such as the Tootsie Roll Pop in 1931.

With the advent of television in the 1950s, Tootsie Roll sponsored numerous children’s programs with clever commercials, including Mr. Owl, who tried to determine how many licks it took to reach a Tootsie Roll Pop’s chocolate center (according to the company’s website, the number of licks depend on the size of a person’s mouth and amount of saliva produced.)

Gordon joined Tootsie Roll Industries as CEO in 1962, then based on the East Coast. The company changed its locale to Chicago in 1968. Under Gordon’s leadership, the company acquired such brands as Charleston Chew, Sugar Babies and Blow Pops.

Almost as notoriously secretive as the fictional candymaker Willy Wonka, the Gordons shunned interviews, refused to hold quarterly earnings calls, and issuing crooked PDFs of earnings, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2012.

The Gordons avoided a corporate takeover through their vise-like majority hold on Tootsie Roll Industries’ publicly traded stock.

Upon the company’s 100th anniversary in 1996, Gordon declared to an AP reporter that the Tootsie Roll was almost indestructible, boasting they were still eating candies made in 1938, Minneapolis Star-Tribune said.

Gordon’s wife of 65 years has been named chairman and CEO by the board of directors, the company said.

In addition to his wife, Ellen, Gordon leaves four daughters, their spouses, six grandchildren, a large extended family, and many friends and colleagues.